Mark Reviews Movies: BLIZZARD OF SOULS

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 7, 2021

Blizzard of Souls is as much about falling into the wrong cause as it is about fighting for what appears to be the right one. In this adaptation of Aleksandrs Grīns' 1934 novel (based on his own experiences in the war and the subsequent Russian Revolution), a teenage boy joins an army unit to fight against an enemy that seemed to take everything from him, only for the young man to learn how much more he has to lose.

It's a grim, mostly unheroic story about the Great War, told from a perspective that is mostly ignored by history. Here, the protagonist is a citizen of Latvia, at the time part of the Russian Empire, aligned with the Allied Powers (France, Britain, later the United States, etc.) against the Central Powers—primarily Germany for this tale. A military formation called the Latvian Riflemen is formed as German soldiers begin spreading through the country, taking whatever they can from the population and burning anything that isn't useful to them to the ground.

At the start of the story, Arturs Vanags (Oto Brantevics) has no reason to care about any of this. He's young—a few months from 17—and in love with a girl (played by Ieva Florence). His home life is happy, and although his older brother Edgars (Raimonds Celms) is on his way to military training for the inevitable fight against the invading German forces, Arturs has no need or desire for such things. The Germans are still somewhere else, and his life has yet to be touched by war.

Then, the Germans do arrive at the family farm. Hiding under a bed, because the enemy combatants imagine foes and spies everywhere they go, Arturs can and does do nothing when the soldiers shoot at the family dog, killing it and the boy's mother in the process.

Arturs' father (played by Martins Vilsons) packs up whatever the two need, buries anything of value, shoots all of the cattle (so the Germans are left with nothing), and leaves the house to be burned by Russian soldiers (again, to prevent the Germans from having anything). Arturs wants to fight now, to avenge his mother's killing, and his father, a decorated veteran who volunteers for a command position, gives his permission for the teenager to join the new formation.

The story, written by Boris Frumin and director Dzintars Dreibergs, is essentially a series of increasing visceral and emotional horrors, as the young Arturs, naïve about the realities of combat while playing around in training, constantly discovers and re-discovers new and terrifying scenarios of trench warfare. At the end of the film, a coda informs us that the population of Latvia was essentially halved by the war, and we certainly believe it by the time Arturs' horrific adventures are finished.

Dreibergs opens the film with a haunting shot crossing over a frozen field, snow and/or ash falling upon uniformed bodies scattered across the scarred and barbed-wired terrain. By the time the film arrives at the battle that results in this image, we have a terrible sense of, not only the human cost of this particular military formation, but also the cultural, national, and psychological toll that has been taken on these soldiers and, indeed, the entire country.

There is, again, little heroism in this tale. This war, as has been documented and analyzed for more than a century since its ended, was more or less useless—a group of empires, led by uncaring rulers and military leaders, fighting over sometimes inches of land in a conflict fueled by disastrous nationalism. The filmmakers communicate that, for certain, as Arturs' comrades march across fields, only to fall suddenly from an enemy bullet, or look over the edge of a trench, only for their skulls to explode in an eruption of blood. When Arturs first arrives in a trench, a mortar attack sends him and fellow soldiers to ground, and amidst the dirt and rubble, they find a stray hand. They can't determine to whom it used to belong.

Arturs suffers wounds and additional familial losses as the story unfolds, but the more substantial loss, perhaps, is any sense of meaning or purpose to his continued fight (How can one avenge so much death against an unseen and anonymous enemy, anyway?). He is understandably hardened and drained by these experiences, with only a short stay at a hospital and some innocent flirtations with a pretty volunteer nurse named Marta (Greta Trusina) serving as some solace (It doesn't last long, and his later reunion with the young woman is hampered by a new brand of dread).

Beneath Arturs' story, though, is another, broader one—about this country, its role within a larger empire, and its apparent expendability within the minds of the people ruling over them. With the Russian military in charge, the Latvian Riflemen regularly find themselves in unnecessarily perilous and strategically impossible situations. When propaganda about revolting against those leaders begins to spread, it's little wonder that Arturs finds himself in a new uniform, fighting for a new cause. How different, though, are his new allies from the enemy he spent years fighting. How much worse can this new battle become?

The answers are clearly made, as Arturs finds himself forced to become the executioner of a friend, but it's the willingness of the filmmakers to pose such questions that makes this film more than just a series of battles and horrors. The real horror of Blizzard of Souls isn't just war. It's the ease with which people use it to maintain or gain power.

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